Terra Australis

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i have now with much pains and study conducted the reader to a period where he must expect to hear of great revolutions for no sooner had our learned brother so often mentioned got a warm house of his own over his head than he began to look big and to take mightily upon him insomuch that unless the gentle reader out of his great candour will please a little to exalt his idea am afraid he will henceforth hardly know the hero of the play when he happens to meet him his parts his dress and his mien being so much altered he told his brothers he would have them to know that he was their elder and consequently his father's sole heir nay a while after he would not allow them to call him brother but mr peter and then he must be styled father peter and sometimes my lord peter to support this grandeur which he soon began to consider could not be maintained without a better fond than what he was born to after much thought he cast about at last to turn projector and virtuoso wherein he so well succeeded that many famous discoveries projects and machines which bear great vogue and practice at present in the world are owing entirely to lord peter's invention i will deduce the best account i have been able to collect of the chief amongst them without considering much the order they came out in because i think authors are not well agreed as to that point i hope when this treatise of mine shall be translated into foreign languages as i may without vanity affirm that the labour of collecting the faithfulness in recounting and the great usefulness of the matter to the public will amply desire of that justice that of the several academies abroad especially those of france and italy will favourably accept these humble offers for the advancement of universal knowledge i do also advertise the most reverend fathers the eastern missionaries that i have purely for their sakes made use of such words and phrases as will best admit any easy turn into any of the oriental languages especially the chinese and so i proceed with great content of mind upon reflecting how much emulament this whole globe of earth is like to reap by my labours the first undertaking of lord peter was to purchase a large continent lately said to have been discovered in terra australis incognita The tract of land he bought at a very great penny worth from the discoverers themselves, though some pretended to doubt whether they had ever been there, and then retailed it into several cantons to certain dealers, who carried over colonies, but were all shipwrecked in the voyage, upon which Lord Peter sold the said continent to other customers again and again, and again and again the same success the second project i shall mention was his sovereign remedy for the worms especially those in the spleen the patient was to eat nothing after supper for three nights as soon as he went to bed he was carefully to lie on one side and when he grew weary to turn upon the other he must also duly confine his two eyes to the same object and by no means break wind at both ends together without manifest occasion these prescriptions diligently observed the worms would avoid insensibly by perspiration ascending through the brain a third invention was the erecting of a whispering office for the public good and ease of all such as are hypochondriacal or troubled with the colic as likewise of all eavesdroppers physicians midwives small politicians friends fallen out repeating poets lovers happy or in despair boards privy counsellors pages parasites and buffoons in short all such as were in danger of bursting with too much wind and at his head was placed so conveniently that the party affected might easily with his mouth accost either of the animal's ears which he was to apply close for a certain space and by a fugitive faculty peculiar to the ears of that animal receive immediate benefit either by eructation or expiration or another very beneficial project of lord peter's was an office of insurance for tobacco pipes martyrs of the modern zeal volumes of poetry shadows and rivers that these nor any of these shall receive damage by fire from whence our friendly societies may plainly find themselves to be only transcribers from this original though the one and the other have been of great benefit to the undertakers as well as of equal to the public lord peter was also held the original author of puppets and rarie shows the great usefulness whereof being so generally known i should not enlarge farther upon this particular but another discovery for which he was much renowned was his famous universal pickle for having remarked how your common pickle in use among housewives was of no further benefit than to preserve dead flesh and certain kinds of vegetables peter with great cost as well as art had contrived a pickle proper for houses gardens towns men women children and cattle wherein he could preserve them as sound as insects in amber now this pickle to the taste the smell and the sight appeared exactly the same with what is in common service for beef and butter and herrings and has been often that way applied with great success but for its may's sovereign virtues was quite a different thing for peter would put in a certain quantity of his powder pimplem pimp after which it never failed of success the operation was performed by sparge fraction in a proper time of the moon the patient who was to be pickled if it were a house would infallibly be preserved from all spiders rats and weasels if the party affected were a dog he should be exempt from mange and madness and hunger it also infallibly took away all scabs and lice and scald heads from children never hindering the patient from any duty either at bed or board But of all Peter's rarities he most valued a certain set of bulls, whose race was by great fortune preserved in a lineal descent from those that guarded the golden fleece.

Though some who pretended to observe them curiously doubted the breed had not been kept entirely chaste, because they had degenerated from their ancestors in some qualities, and had acquired others very extraordinary, but a foreign mixture.

The bulls of Colchis are recorded to have brazen feet, but whether it happened by ill posture and running, by an ally from intervention of other parents from stolen intrigues, whether a weakness in their progenitors had impaired the seminal virtue, or by decline necessary through a long course of time, the originals of nature being depraved in these latter sinful ages of the world, whatever was the cause.

A Project for the Universal Benefit of Mankind The author, having laboured so long and done so much to serve and instruct the public, without any advantage to himself, has at last thought of a project which will tend to the great benefit of all mankind, and produce a handsome revenue to the author.

He

intends to print by subscription, in ninety-six large volumes in folio, an exact description of Terra Australis Incognita, collected with great care and prints from nine hundred and ninety-nine learned and pious authors of undoubted veracity,

a whole work illustrated with maps and cuts agreeable to the subject, and done by the best masters will cost one guinea each volume to subscribers one guinea to be paid in advance and afterwards a guinea on receiving each volume except the last this work will be of great

There is, however, an imaginary southern continent laid down with great boldness.

The existence of Terra Australis Incognita had in fact already begun to haunt men's minds.

It was said that Juan Fernandez had actually landed on this continent and found there a white people, civilized, well-formed, and well-clothed.

It was within a month's sail of Chile, but no one else ever found this continent.

During the 17th century the troubles and civil wars at home kept the English quiet.

It is the century of the Dutch.

The Spaniards, however, in the course of a voyage in search of the southern continent discovered, it was in 1606, the coast of Terra Australis.

As for the Dutch, they sent out Joris Spielbergen in 1615, who sailed up the coast and defeated the Spanish fleet.

This had an important influence on the views of Ptolemy, as we shall see, and indirectly helped long afterwards to the discovery of America.

it was left to ptolemy of alexandria to sum up for the ancient world all the knowledge that had been accumulating from the time of eratosthenes to his own day which we may fix at about one fifty a d he took all the information he could find in the writings of the preceding four hundred years and reduced it all to one uniform scale for it is to him that we owe the invention of the method and the names of latitude and longitude previous writers had been content to say that the distance between one point and another was so many stadia but he reduced all this rough reckoning to so many degrees of latitude and longitude from fixed lines as starting points but unfortunately all these reckonings were rough calculations which are almost invariably beyond the truth and ptolemy though the greatest of ancient astronomers still further distorted his results by assuming that a degree was five hundred stadia or fifty geographical miles thus when he found in any of his authorities that the distance between one port and another was five hundred stadia he assumed in the first place that this was accurate and in the second that the distance between the two places was equal to a degree of latitude or longitude as the case might be accordingly he arrived at the result that the breadth of the habitable globe was as he put it twelve hours of longitude corresponding to a hundred and eighty degrees nearly one-third as much again as the real dimension from spain to china the consequence of this was that the distance from spain to china westward was correspondingly diminished by sixty degrees or nearly four thousand miles and it was this error that ultimately encouraged columbus to attempt his epoch-making voyage ptolemy's errors of calculation would not have been so extensive but that he adopted a method of measurement which made them accumulative if he had chosen alexandria for the point of departure in measuring longitude the errors he made when reckoning westward would have been counterbalanced by those reckoning eastward and would not have resulted in any serious distortion of the truth but instead of this he adopted as his point of departure the fortunate insulae or canary islands and every degree measured to the east of these was one-fifth too great since he assumed that it was only fifty miles in length i may mention that so great has been the influence of ptolemy on geography that up to the middle of the last century pharaoh in the canary islands was still retained as the zero point of the meridians of longitude another point in which ptolemy's system strongly influenced modern opinion was his departure from the previous assumption that the world was surrounded by the ocean derived from homer Instead of Africa being thus cut through the middle by the ocean, Ptolemy assumed, possibly from vague traditional knowledge, that Africa extended an unknown length to the south and joined on to an equally unknown continent far to the east, which in the Latinized versions of his astronomical work was termed Terra Australis Incognita, or the Unknown Southland.

as by his error with regard to the breadth of the earth ptolemy led to columbus so by his mistaken notions as to the great southland he prepared the way for the discoveries of captain cook but notwithstanding these errors which were due partly to the roughness of the materials which he had to deal with and partly to scientific caution ptolemy's work is one of the great monuments of human industry and knowledge For the Old World, it remained the basis of all geographical knowledge up to the beginning of the last century, just as his astronomical work was only finally abolished by the work of Newton.

Ptolemy has thus the rare distinction of being the greatest authority on two important departments of human knowledge, astronomy and geography, for over 1,500 years.

And I know that the Commodore visited him often.

In March, we sighted Terra Australis, and encountering the English colony there, we took on wood and fresh water, enough that the father could take a goodly long drink.

He was smiling when he died.

We buried him at Botany Bay, ashore from the small cove, downhill from the colony, and over the duration of our stay, the English took to calling it Frenchman's Cove, and whenever the Commodore heard this appellation, he would grit his teeth.

We shoved off from Terra Australis on a northeasterly bearing, back into the Blue Heart, and the Commodore's agitation only worsened.

Being the voyage naturalist, and furthermore an Englishman, I was somewhat excused from the Commodore's chain of command and found it appropriate that I should soothe him.

I endeavored to present him with a novel species which could carry the name Laberus, God's creatures constituting, in my view, a rather more prestigious namesake than some rocky barrens half-founded in the sea.

When the Dutch began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, they called the continent by what name before the name Australia was popularized by the explorer Matthew Flinders?

From the first European slide, it called it Terra Australis dell'Espirito Santo, but I don't feel like that's the answer you're looking for here.

Uh, Van Demon's Land, as I said, I think was Tasmania specifically.

Well, embarrassingly...

That's not coming to mind immediately.

So...

I have to assume that the early name of Terra Australis de l'Espiritu Santo is not what you want because that's Terra Australis or Australia.

Southern land.

There is, however, an imaginary southern continent laid down with great boldness.

The existence of Terra Australis Incognita had in fact already begun to haunt men's minds.

It was said that one Fernandez had actually landed on this continent and found there a white people, civilized, well-formed, and well-clothed.

It was within a month's sail of Chile, but no one else ever found this continent.

During the 17th century the troubles and civil wars at home kept the English quiet.

It is the century of the Dutch.

The Spaniards, however, in the course of a voyage in search of the southern continent discovered, it was in 1606, the coast of Terra Australis.

As for the Dutch, they sent out Joris Spielbergen in 1615, who sailed up the coast and defeated the Spanish fleet.